Value Microcaps Junior Miners

[value1008]

AMY.v / AMYZF - up 50-60% today. A ghost from the past, Canadian co. AMY (American Manganese Inc.) started coming to life again several months ago when it began to reveal that it could recycle material from lithium batteries to produce new ones.

Today it jumped up on highest volume in years (over 18.8 million shares), hitting intraday high of CAD 0.29 and USOTC 0.216, on news of successful test of phase 3 of its proprietary tech.

The stock is now generating a lot of interest on stockhouse message board. I still have several tens of thousands of shares from over 5 years ago and am thinking i'll hold on. Marketcap is still only $18M and this co. could easily get bought out for a multiple of that given its transformation into what looks like a very valuable "tech" company (no longer just a mining co.).

I've included here an article from several weeks ago which gives an overview of the tech, and also provided here today's PR......

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http://www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2016/09/15/american-manganese-the-miner-that-became-tech-company#GHJSrtKs7AXAZG4j.99

American Manganese: The miner that became a tech company

Jeff Nielson, Stockhouse.com
Sept. 14, 2016

Mention the metal manganese to most investors, even investors in the resource sector, and one might get a lot of blank looks. Considered a “specialty metal”, it’s not a resource which receives as much media coverage as many of the better-known industrial metals.

Yet this specialty metal was one of the first metals utilized by humanity. Tens of thousands of years ago, when our ancestors still dwelled in caves, manganese was being utilized as a pigment. Why does this under-appreciated metal have such a long history in industrial usage?

To begin with; manganese is a substance which is not found as a free element in nature, rather it only occurs in the form of chemical compounds. Most commonly, manganese is found in the form of manganese dioxide, and it could be utilized by our ancestors, in that raw form, as a pigment.

Today, humanity mines large quantities of manganese dioxide, but it is no longer produced for use as a pigment. Instead, it has both 20th century and 21st century applications which make this metal indispensable to industry. In the 20th century, manganese emerged as a vital, irreplaceable component of steel-making, because of its corrosion-resistance properties. There is no substitution for manganese in the manufacture of steel.

Manganese also became an important component in battery-making, used as the cathode for the original zinc dry-cell batteries upon which we were dependent, until more hi-tech batteries emerged – in the 21st century. But while the new lithium-based rechargeable batteries are vastly different from and superior to the older dry-cells, our 21st century batteries still require the use of manganese for some of the cathode materials.

With our vast requirements for steel, and vast requirements for batteries, the manganese mining industry is approaching even copper mining in terms of sheer scale. However, despite its critical importance in industry, today there is virtually no manganese production in North America.

Why not? In a word, grades. While manganese deposits of considerable size and abundance have been identified on this continent, these are relatively low-grade ore deposits in relation to the high-grade manganese mining of (in particular) Gabon, South Africa and Australia. Enter American Manganese (TSX: V.AMY, Forum).

American Manganese engaged in a major effort to consolidate a large swath of past-producing mines, as well as patented and unpatented claims in the state of Arizona. Known as its Artillery Peak project, this 12-square mile land package is comprised of ten past-producing mines, 79 patented claims, and 100 unpatented claims. Altogether, it comprises the largest manganese resource in North America.

American Manganese has since significantly reduced its mineral rights at Artillery Peak Arizona until the price of manganese electrolytic metals has a substantial rise. The production challenge facing American Manganese was not quantity, it was quality – the grades don’t measure up to higher grade deposits elsewhere in the world. Confronted with this challenge, CEO Larry Reaugh, Kemetco Research and the rest of the management team rolled up their sleeves and went to work.

Their starting point was in looking for a better way to extract manganese, to make the process more efficient, and thus make the grades at Artillery Peak more commercially viable. The Company’s efforts attracted attention. Among the interested parties was the National Research Council of Canada, which awarded American Manganese several grants to aid it in coming up with a superior process.

The result of this time, effort, and invested dollars is a proprietary patented (patented in the US, South Africa and China) technique for manganese extraction which is both more efficient than other, existing processes, as well as being environmentally friendly. But then American Manganese was faced with a second challenge. Manganese prices in global markets retreated.

After the price of manganese peaked at over $3.50/lb at the height of the commodities bull market, it has since slipped to well below $1/lb. Thus even with the more efficient extraction process, the economics of the Artillery Peak project made moving toward production problematic.

Management rolled up their sleeves, again. They knew they had a better process for manganese extraction, whether used on the massive resource at Artillery Peak or elsewhere. They just needed to find an application for this process upon which the Company could capitalize, over the near term.

American Manganese made another breakthrough, this time a technological application outside the world of mining: recycling of the same hi-tech batteries which contain cathode materials. Through work done by Kemetco Research, the Company discovered that the same process which produced more efficient manganese mining could also be adapted to much more efficient and thus much more environmentally-friendly recycling of lithium ion batteries.

In fact, it is because the recycling process is so efficient that it is much “greener.” Conventional attempts at recycling these batteries have been inadequate, at best. The main problem is that because only modest levels of the metals in these batteries could be recovered (primarily lithium and cobalt) there were large quantities of toxic waste products remaining even after this recycling.

American Manganese’s innovative process for recycling of batteries has produced 100% leach recovery of both the lithium and cobalt contained in these batteries. The process is conducive with respect to lithium-cobalt, lithium-cobalt-nickel-manganese, and lithium-manganese rechargeable batteries.

The great success of the company at the recycling end of the battery-producing process has led to a new mantra at American Manganese: the “circular economy” – making new cathode material out of old batteries. Suddenly, a world of closed-doors has become a world of options for the Company.

As American Manganese looks to move forward with manganese mining, recycling ventures, or both, it is now in a position of choosing the most-promising avenue for growing the company and increasing shareholder value.
a) Seeking a joint venture partner for a battery-recycling and battery-production facility.
b) Licensing third-party companies to use its patent for battery-recycling/production.
c) Licensing third-party mining companies to use the patent for their own manganese extraction.
d) Seeking financing for its own recycling facility.

In looking to facilitate new projects on the recycling end of its business, another option being pondered by management would be to spin-out the recycling unit, as a stand-alone entity which would be better positioned to capitalize on the emerging opportunities in battery recycling and battery production.

While time ticks by, the world continues accumulating these old Electric Vehicle (EV) rechargeable batteries. Already, the environmental cost of the lack of adequate battery-recycling comes with a tangible price. End users of these lithium ion batteries have had a so-called “tipping fee” imposed upon them, currently in the range of dollars per pound of battery weight.

With its zero-waste recycling patent, any widespread use of the Company’s patented process would at the least greatly reduce this tipping-fee, possibly taking it down to zero. The more time that goes by without the adoption of cleaner/greener technology, the higher the tipping fee will go, further increasing the economic incentives to adopt American Manganese’s process.

However, this is far from the only economic dynamic which is making the Company’s recycling process more and more appealing (and potentially lucrative). Another market dynamic which has management very excited about what the future holds is the supply of cobalt.

Unlike the manganese market itself; the lithium/ cobalt market is much tighter in terms of supply and demand. Cobalt prices are currently hovering above $12/lb. But the cobalt market is a relatively inelastic market. The majority of cobalt production comes in the form of by-by-products – of other mining.

What this means is that if supplies of cobalt tighten further, even higher prices alone will not be enough to close a potential supply deficit, since a higher price for cobalt can/will do very little to increase by-product production of this metal. This leaves recycling as one of the easiest means of ramping-up the global supply of cobalt, with American Manganese’s recovery of cobalt being the most-attractive recycling option from multiple perspectives. American Manganese could potentially become the largest single supplier of cobalt.

Waiting in the wings is Artillery Peak. When manganese prices rebound from their current trough, the Company will once again be reaching out for partners and/or financing to advance this huge project toward production.

As American Manganese looks to move forward with manganese mining, battery recycling/production, or both, the Company is blurring the distinction between “a mining company” and “a tech company.” Now investors looking for resource and tech exposure in their portfolios can find both components, in a single package.

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[Here's today's news:]

Nov. 10, 2016:

American Manganese Inc. Reports: Phase 3 Successful Completion of Proof of Concept for Upcycling and Recycling EV Lithium-Ion Battery Cathode Material

Larry W. Reaugh, President and Chief Executive Officer of American Manganese Inc. (American Manganese or AMI or the Company), (TSX.V: AMY; Pink Sheets: AMYZF; Frankfurt: 2AM), is pleased to announce that Phase 3 testing conducted by Kemetco Research Inc. (Kemetco) confirms that rechargeable lithium-ion battery coin cells can be successfully produced from lithium-cobalt cathode material regenerated using AMI’s proprietary process. The resulting lithium-ion button cell battery produced from AMIs proprietary process was charged to a maximum of 4.2 volts and then discharged to a minimum of 2 volts. This charge-and-discharge test was repeated 10 times without the battery losing its chargeability.

Norm Chow, President of Kemetco says, Based on these preliminary results, it can be concluded that the American Manganese upcycling technology can transform spent lithium-ion battery cathode material into high-purity intermediate products (e.g., lithium carbonate and cobalt carbonate) as well as into lithium-ion cathode material suitable for the fabrication of new batteries.

These results validate the AMI process, said Mr. Reaugh. With this final phase test work, we’ve taken lithium-ion battery cathode material from the recovered component metals through reconstitution of the cathode materials to produce working chargeable cells.

Battery Fabrication and Assembly

During Phase 3 testing the lithium cobalt dioxide (Li2CoO2), which was generated from experiment SCL6S and identified with 100% purity by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) (please see the Oct 14, 2016 press release for further details), was used in the lithium ion cathode material formulation for button cell fabrication. The cathode material was then prepared by combining a solid mixture of 90% (by weight) Li2CoO2, 6% Carbon Black, and 4% PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) with NMP (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone). This cathode material mixture was subsequently coated onto aluminum foil and dried for 2 hours at 120C in a vacuum oven to form the lithium-ion battery cathode. The button cell batteries were assembled as follows: top cell case, cathode, separator, anode, spacer, ring-shaped spring, and bottom cell case. The anode was made from purchased graphite. The ring-shaped spring was placed between the negative casing and the spacer to ensure adequate pressure was applied to the cell components. Both the spring and the spacer are made from stainless steel. A thin layer of polyolefin was used as the separator.

The Company will report on the next R&D program in a future release.